Entries in Charles Frederick Gray
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Early on May 15 1919 in the neighbourhood known as Happyland (which later became Wolseley - neither happy nor unhappy due to Restoril and Xanax) a man, posing as a monk, was nabbed in the act of deflating bicycle tires and opening the diaper flaps of idling dray horses.

For weeks, Happyland-Wolseleyites had glimpsed the miscreant, and there was a whisper campaign where he was dubbed "The Barbarian" or "The Anarchist". Some suspected he was a Bolshevik since that word was in vogue and it was thought a few of them had infiltrated from far away and were trying to lure young sons into the ballet.

They caught this barbarian-monk very near the spot where the Westminster Tot Lot and the Organic Planet Worker Co-op exist today but for reasons of national security we are unable to be more precise, or even to disclose how we came on this info.

Suffice to say the rogue claimed complete innocence, pleaded for mercy and said he was just going door-to-door canvassing for alms. But really, there was little doubt in the minds of most that he was a disturber of gumbo-grade excrement. Besides, no one had really even heard of alms since the term for this, in Happyland, was baksheesh.

He was caught when an observant Wolseley gardener, peering from behind her cannabis and rhododendron bushes, saw that the Rasputin-like sneak had the only wheels with air. And she reported smelling a horse-dung vapour trail mere footsteps behind wherever he trod. The Bolshie-rogue also was also wearing that weird purple robe you see on monks today when they stand together in unity with Justin Trudeau in Myanmar, which was then Burmese territory of British India and Trudeau was not yet elected even for the first time.

Anyway the purple robe was a dead giveaway, when you really stop and think about it.

And so folks of course knew intuitively that the anarchist-rogue was a ne'er-do-well. And when he made the mistake of rapping on the ornate oak door of the home of Charles Frederick Gray the jig was sauced. "Begging for arms? I'll show you arms!" Gray poncified, as he also happened to be the city's mayor. And so, because he was empowered to do so, Mayor C.F. Gray called in the fire brigade. (And when you look in the history books you discover there was something going on between third parties and the mayor and fire brigade.) But then C.F. Gray also ended up reading the Riot Act, because he was empowered to do so. And one thing led to another. And the good people of Wolseley (aka Happylanders) certainly then girded themselves and also felt empowered and so gave poser-nose barbarous Bolshie-man all the alms he could beg for alright. They fastened that rogue-culprit-monk right then and there to a wide Wolseley elm - so that he might contemplate through the day the suffering they might later inflict on him.

Now it remained early in the a.m., remember, and so off was the direction in which most of the Wolesleyers fucked, as they travelled to work and then arrived against the granularity of others who were not working that day, it being the apex of a general strike. Still, the Wolseleyists huddled together and pondered what to do with the rogue-alien anarchist. "Look at the hook on that Bolshie - he's one of those foreign fakirs," suggested the mayor. "For sure this is the son of a daddy-fakir and mother-fakir," agreed the educated water-cooler crowd who gathered at City Hall, not just a few Wolseleyists among them. And the bunch of them got whipped into a bit of a froth over the whole thing. "The eyes. Like those of the football club manager," said one frother. "He likely does capital markets business at Deutsche Bank," whispered another.

An aperitif; Winkler sausage

So on and so forth, back and fro-to. Until finally the majority of Happylanders decided the best course would be to throw the rogueish son of a mother-fakir into the Assiniboine River after they got home from work, had an aperitif, dinner, and laid on every bone a good beating. This was justified seeing as how Mr. poser-rogue hook-mother was probably from the North End, anyway.

And this is where it got interesting. Because it was precisely at this juncture in the day – high noon - that the local ice wagon driver (who sold harpitars, Fuller brush and Avon products, Singer sewing machines, Colliers Encyclopediae, MSG-free Winkler sausage and vacuum prototypes as well as ice blocks) was driving his cool wagon along the Wolseley rues and vards. The ice-vendor saw the misbegotten poser-rogue tied to the elm tree and quizzified him.

"So what's on you mother-fakir? You feel me? Why are you tied to this tree?"

Incidentally, the iceman-Fuller etc wore a strawberry-hued cap with a vacuum cleaner advert that said: Filter Queen Sure Sucks. Who could dare say that he was not the sharpest sword in the celestial armoury?

"Ah, some men have put me here because I won't accept their money," explained mother-rogue monk-poser think-ahead sneak.

"What do you mean, you won't take their money? And why do they want to give it to you?" asked icicle-Fuller-feely man, his eyes narrowing.

"Can you not see from my Trudeau-appealing robe that I am a contemplative? They are trying to corrupt me. Godless bunch these Wolseleys."

"I feel you," said iceman, who had a suggestion and a plan. And so he unbound the barbie-fakir from the elm tree and they changed places.

Later, following an aperitif, dinner, and a few digestifs, a crowd gathered beneath the phattest neighbourhood elm for an early evening beating and river-tossing. They put a sack over the head of the Fuller-ice-sausage-feely guy. Down to the riverbank among the scrub-oak branches which rose all scraggly like the arms of the crucified, they dragged their victim.

And together they tossed him into the Assiniboine.

Now in 1919 the Assiniboine River was at its highest and swiftest since 1883 when everything got disrupted by Krakatoa, the sky turned a queezy purple, and Charles F. Gray's second cousin Marvin strangled the six starlings. So ice-man drowned.

The day followed the night and Wolseleyite-Happylanders were amazed to see the rogue-nosed barbarian-mother enter their hood on an ice-wagon with all of this Avon-Fuller vacuum paraphernalia dangling out all jingly-jangly.

"Where have you been and where did you get that MSG-free Winkler sausage?" they asked.

"In the Assiniboine are kindly spirits who reward all who jump in and 'drown' in this manner," said the rogue, taking a swig of bottled Avon-water.

In almost less time than it takes to tell, all of Happyland dashed to the Assiniboine and leaped in.

And this was how the anarchist-barbie son-of-a-mother-fakir took over Wolseley. THE END.

Reader Note: This blog entry was updated 2017, first published here 2012.